alexsarll | Posting for the sake of it while waiting for Torchwood to finish taping (no dead Beadle content)

Another post, another venue under threat of 'development', and not a superclub this time but The George Tavern.

Gloomy didn't quite go according to plan on Saturday - I decided not to rely on the normal Live Gloom habit of running late given THWFOS were on first, but I certainly hadn't planned for them to run early. Oh well. Could have done without the grunge headliners, but I found the devotion of Nebraska's fans interesting in an abstract sort of way (this is how the fans of the small bands I like must look to outsiders). And no night where the DJ plays 'You Could Have Both' can ever really be considered a failure.

Sunday's Tubewalk was probably the best yet for animals - turkeys! Goats! White peacocks (probably)! Plus two very good pubs afterwards, though one of them would probably have been a bit cramped for our party even without the amount of space taken up by the live jazz. Stowford Press cider in both, too, which made a nice contrast to the South Bank on Monday; the NFT bar now only has Magners, and the QEH only some incredibly gloopy organic stuff. Very poor. But more than worth enduring for the wonderful Robyn Hitchcock, ostensibly playing I Often Dream Of Trains, an album which I would say deserves a lot more mentions in Great Albums articles, if I didn't hate those articles in the first place. I've never really been to one of those classic album shows before (when I've seen albums played in full, it's usually at their launch, before posterity can get its claws in), and always feared that they might be a bit predictable. Perhaps Hitchcock felt the same way - he opts to play the 'director's cut', opening with a cover of Roxy Music's 'More Than This' (apparently Avalon inspired the 'deep green' album he was trying to make in IODOT), dropping in songs which weren't on the album but could have been, omitting others which were (most noticeably 'Sometimes I Wish I Was a Pretty Girl'). And, of course, interspersing the songs with explanations and banter - about how Frank Sinatra never covered one in spite of (or maybe because of) being a "Sagittarian love warrior", how you should never give the voice in your head your PIN, about how all actors are from Alpha Centauri (and I should have guessed at the time, but yes, apparently Robyn has acted - he was in the remade Manchurian Candidate). What a mad, groovy b@st@rd he is.
(And 'Trams of Old London' ties us back to the Tubewalk, where we crossed one of the new tram lines, and I attempted to provoke the trams, for no particular reason)

edit: Just turned on the TV to watch Torchwood and what should I see but a sullen youth, with all the outraged self-righteousness of Armstrong & Miller's airmen, indignantly asking "How come they can stop and search me? Why can't I stop and search them?"
Yeah, you've really not grasped the basic concept of 'the police' there, have you?